The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories. Woolson Constance Fenimore

butterflies danced before her as she hastened towards the loaded trees. Reaching them, she looked up. The boughs were bare. All the figs had been gathered in the night, or at earliest dawn.

      "Pipper!" she murmured to herself.

      The ground under the trees was trampled.

      Seven weeks later, on the 16th of November, this same Prudence was adding to her secreted store the fifteen cents needed to make the sum ten francs exactly – that is, two dollars. "Ten francs, a fifth of the whole! It seems 'most too lucky that I've got on so well, spite of Pipper's taking the figs. If I can keep along this way, it'll all be done by the Fourth of July; not just the cow-shed taken away, but the front yard done too. My!" She sat down on a fagot to think it over. The thought was rapture; she laughed to herself and at herself for being so happy.

      Some one called, "Mamma." She came out, and found Jo Vanny looking for her. Nounce and Jo Vanny were the only ones among the children who had ever called her mother.

      "Oh, you're up there in the shed, are you?" said Jo Vanny. "Somehow, mamma, you look very gay."

      "Yes, I'm gay," answered Prudence. "Perhaps some of these days I'll tell you why." In her heart she thought: "Jo Vanny, now, he'd understand; he'd feel as I do if I should explain it to him. A nice front yard he has never seen in all his life, for they don't have 'em here. But once he knew what it was, he'd care about it as much as I do; I know he would. He's sort of American, anyhow." It was the highest praise she could give. The boy had his cap off; she smoothed his hair. "'Pears to me you must have lost your comb," she said.

      "I'm going to have it all cut off as short as can be," announced Jo Vanny, with a resolute air.

      "Oh no."

      "Yes, I am. Some of the other fellows have had theirs cut that way, and I'm going to, too," pursued the young stoic.

      He was eighteen, rather undersized and slender, handsome as to his face, with large dark long-lashed eyes, well-cut features, white teeth, and the curly hair which Prudence had smoothed. Though he had vowed them to destruction, these love-locks were for the present arranged in the style most approved in Assisi, one thick glossy flake being brought down low over the forehead, so that it showed under his cap in a sentimental wave. He did not look much like a hard-working carpenter as he stood there dressed in dark clothes made in that singular exaggeration of the fashions which one sees only in Italy. His trousers, small at the knee, were large and wing-like at the ankle, half covering the tight shabby shoes run down at the heel and absurdly short, which, however, as they were made of patent-leather and sharply pointed at the toes, Jo Vanny considered shoes of gala aspect. His low flaring collar was surrounded by a red-satin cravat ornamented by a gilt horseshoe. He wore a ring on the little finger of each hand. In his own eyes his attire was splendid.

      In the eyes of some one else also. To Prudence, as he stood there, he looked absolutely beautiful; she felt all a mother's pride rise in her heart as she surveyed him. But she must not let him see it, and she must scold him for wearing his best clothes every day.

      "I didn't know it was a festa," she began.

      "'Tain't. But one of the fellows has had a sister married, and they've invited us all to a big supper to-night."

      "To-night isn't to-day, that I know of."

      "Do you wish me to go all covered with sawdust?" said the little dandy, with a disdainful air. "Besides, I wanted to come up here."

      "It is a good while sence we've seen you," Prudence admitted. In her heart she was delighted that he had wished to come. "Have you had your dinner, Jo Vanny?"

      "All I want. I'll take a bit of bread and some wine by-and-by. But you needn't go to cooking for me, mamma. I say, tell me what it was that made you look so glad?" said the boy, curiously.

      "Never you mind now," said Prudence, the gleam of content coming again into her eyes, and lighting up her brown, wrinkled face. She was glad that she had the ten francs; she was glad to see the boy; she was touched by his unselfishness in declining her offer of a second dinner. No other member of the family would have declined or waited to decline; the others would have demanded some freshly cooked dish immediately upon entering; Uncle Patro would have demanded three or four.

      "I've brought my mandolin," Jo Vanny went on. "I've got to take it to the supper, of course, because they always want me to sing – I never can get rid of 'em! And so you can hear me, if you like. I know the new songs, and one of them I composed myself. Well, it's rather heavenly."

      All Tonio's children sang like birds. Poor Prudence, who had no ear for music, had never been able to comprehend either the pleasure or the profit of the hours they gave to their carollings. But when, in his turn, her little Jo Vanny began his pipings, then she listened, or tried to listen. "Real purty, Jo Vanny," she would say, when the silence of a moment or two had assured her that his song was ended; it was her only way of knowing – the silence.

      So now she brought her work out to the garden, and sewed busily while Jo Vanny sang and thrummed. Nounce, too, came out, and sat on the wall near by, listening.

      At length the little singer took himself off – took himself off with his red-satin cravat, his horseshoe pin, and his mandolin under his arm. Nounce went back to the house, but Prudence sat awhile longer, using, as she always did, the very last rays of the sunset light for her sewing.

      After a while she heard a step, and looked up. "Why, Gooster! – anything the matter?" she said, in surprise.

      Unlike the slender little Jo Vanny, Gooster was a large, stoutly built young man, as slow in his motions as Jo Vanny was quick. He was a lethargic fellow with sombre eyes, eyes which sometimes had a gleam in them.

      "There's nothing especial the matter," he answered, dully. "I think I'll go for a soldier, Denza."

      "Go for a soldier? And the per-dairy?"

      "I can't never go back to the podere. She's there, and she has taken up with Matteo. I've had my heart trampled upon, and so I've got a big hankering either to kill somebody or get killed myself; and I'll either do it here, or I'll go for a soldier and get knifed in the war."

      "Mercy on us! there isn't any war now," said Prudence, dazed by these sanguinary suggestions.

      "There's always a war. What else are there soldiers for? And there's lots of soldiers. But I could get knifed here easy enough; Matteo and I – already we've had one tussle; I gave him a pretty big cut, you may depend."

      Seventeen years earlier Prudence Wilkin would have laughed at the idea of being frightened by such words as these. But Mrs. Tonio Guadagni had heard of wild deeds in Assisi, and wilder ones still among the peasants of the hill country roundabout; these singing, indolent Umbrians dealt sometimes in revenges that were very direct and primitive.

      "You let Matteo alone, Gooster," she said, putting her hand on his arm; "you go straight over to Perugia and stay there. Perhaps you can get work where Parlo and Squawly are."

      "I shall have it out with Matteo here, or else go for a soldier to-morrow," answered Gooster, in his lethargic tone.

      "Well, go for a soldier, then."

      "It don't make much difference to me which I do," Gooster went on, as if only half awake. "If I go for a soldier, I shall have to get to Florence somehow, I suppose; I shall have to have ten francs for the railroad."

      "Is it ten exactly?" said Prudence. Her mind flew to her work-box, which held just that sum.

      "It's ten."

      "Haven't you got any money at all, Gooster?" She meant to help him on his way; but she thought that she should like to keep, if possible, a nest-egg to begin with again – say twenty cents, or ten.

      Gooster felt in his pockets. "Three soldi," he replied, producing some copper coins and counting them over.

      "And there's nothing due you at the per-dairy?"

      There was no necessity for answering such a foolish question as this, and Gooster did not answer it.

      "Well, I will give you the money," said Prudence. "But to-morrow'll do, won't it? Stay here a day or two, and we'll talk it over."

      While